France races to head off ISIS-K threat to Paris Olympics

Tajik journalist Temur Varki received a disquieting call from Paris police in late March, days after Islamic State militants from his homeland allegedly carried out a massacre in Moscow.

The two officers questioned him about France’s tiny community of immigrants from Tajikistan, an impoverished former Soviet republic in Central Asia.

“Who do you know? How many? Where?” Varki recalled the officers asking, with one of them speaking Russian, a commonly used language across Central Asia. Varki, a political refugee in France who has worked for outlets including the BBC, told the police callers he knew a handful of Tajiks in the country, mainly fellow emigres and dissidents.

“But I don’t know any jihadists,” he told them.

Ahead of the Paris Olympics that begin on July 26, French security services have been racing to address an intelligence blind spot and forge deeper ties with Tajiks and other Central Asians in the country, according to more than a dozen people with knowledge of the drive. They include current and former intelligence officials, police, diplomats and Central Asian migrants who have been contacted by authorities.

Read more: Reuters